Sound: Very good all purpose axe. Plays well with everything I play (blues, metal, rock)sounds especially good with a boss ds-1 on mid(ish) settings. 5 way switching allows for a big variety of tones. The only problem is the slight buzz when using a single coil with heavier distortion. The pickups had a little rust on them, but thats no problem. I would change the single coil though, as it is a bit dull. // 8

Action, Fit & Finish: Very low action neck, the wizard 2 neck makes fingerwork extremely easy, but detuning it is a bit awkward, as you have to unscrew the nut everytime, which keeps the tuning stable, but awkward. The pickups looked a little overused, but still gave the sound I wanted. There was a small chip in the wood, but thats why it was only 120. // 8

Reliability & Durability: The guitar itself is very reliable and would definitely be gigable. I wouldn't go without a backup, but I'm paranoid about things like that. // 10

Overall Impression: Finding this guitar was very lucky, and the wizard 2 neck makes playing with heavier gauge strings easier, and plays a lot faster than any other necks I have seen. A new single coil on it would make it even better, but that's not the end of the world as it is easily replaced. // 10

S370
Reviewed by:
doulittle, on january 07, 2008 0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Price paid: $ 395

Purchased from: Used

Features: This guitar is made in Japan in 2003. It has 22 jumbo frets and has a wooden finish on a carved top mahogany Strat body. The guitar has an Ibanez Floyd Rose. There's 3 controls: volume, tone and 5-way pickup selector. It has 3 humbleckers that I dunno the model. The tuners are the stocks Ibanez. When I Bought it, the guy did not gave me the case so I don't know what the included accessories. // 6

Sound: I Tried metal, rock, country, blues and jazz and it sound like magical. I plug it into my Mesa Dual Rectifier with my GT-8 and the sound was unbelievable. It sound not too noisy, not very bright and has a rich cool sound. The guitar is good for any harmonics: natural, pinch, tap etc. But it Need to change the pickups. // 8

Action, Fit & Finish: I love the finish. The hardware used for this guitar is pretty solid. The only thing that I hate was that the guitar get scratch too easily. This guitar is too cheap. Ibanez need to put more feature on it like better pickups, better Floyd etc. The pickups were a bit to close to the strings, so I had to lower them slightly. // 7

Reliability & Durability: This guitar withstand Live playing! The guitar seemed to me solid but the volume and tone button isn't much. The strap button is pretty solid. You can't depend on this gutar for a show, when a string breaks, try to replace a string in 2 min with a Floyd Rose. The Finish is pretty cool. They did not paint the guitar, they only put some vernish. The guitar get scratch too easily. // 8

Overall Impression: I Play Metal and it's very good for me. I'm playing since 3 years and with my Mesa it sound really great. If this guitar were stolen, I wouldn't buy the same guitar I would buy the Ibanez S2170FW. I love my guitar, I love the agressive tone it could have and the clear tone too. I Hate only the scratches. If you put DiMarzio pickups, Floyd Rose Zero Gravity and you put the S2170FW neck on it, it would be the best guitar ever been! // 9

S370
Reviewed by:
thatorkdude, on june 30, 2010 0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Price paid: $ 170

Features: Complete with a 21-jumbo-fret neck, a Hum-single-hum setup, and a Floyd Rose ZR vibrato system (unfortunately missing the pressure pads and plug-in arm), this Japanese-made, thin-body superstrat is a really sweet battle-axe. A beautiful, rich purple colour on a mahogany body makes it look as good as it sounds. My brother hooked me up with a great case and a fresh set of strings with this babe as well. // 10

Sound: This guitar sounds pretty good with about all of the styles I play. It can give some dark, heavy crunch out of the neck pickup and bright, harmonicky sound out of the bridge. The middle single-coil helps balance the pickups out if you want some in-between sound. I can get some nice outer-space-sounding music out of this thing with a little phaser and delay from my Zoom G1X, or I can get some good, ballsy crunch with heavy distortion. The noise level is universes lower with this than with my old Crestwood electric. That helps a whole lot with my scales and up-high riffs. // 8

Action, Fit & Finish: The action on this Saber might be a little high for real shredders, but for Mr.-Lead-Fingers people like myself, it's pretty comfortable at about 2-2.5 mm above the frets. I see nothing wrong with the wiring on it and I haven't had any problems yet. Three big things are wrong with the finish: There's an inch-square patch of scratched-off paint that's all silver (I don't mind it that much; it gives the guitar a little character), there's a nasty gash near the bottom-left (looking at it on a stand), and the strap-peg seems to have been ripped out, because there's a big hole there, and it's so deep that I can't put in a new peg (which could be fixed with some woodfiller or Bondo in a real jiffy). Because the finish on the front doesn't show the wood grain, bookmatching on the body can't be defined accurately, but the headstock-neck joint was pretty seamless to my eye. // 7

Reliability & Durability: I wouldn't bother bringing a backup guitar to a gig with this baby, but even though I'd expect this thing to last for a long time, I'm still treating it like a robin's egg (partly because my brother would kick my ass if anything happened to it), so I'm probably not going to be doing any neck-spins or shit like that with it. The strap peg that is still on the guitar seems like it's pretty sturdy, and when I get the other one put in, I'd probably trust them both with the weight of the guitar. I'm confident that the hardware will last a good while, and even if it doesn't there's always the option of having a luthier replace it with something else. I'm not sure about the finish on this guitar, partly because of the scrape that's already on it and the fact that it's so thin that they probably didn't bother with putting much finish on it, but I'm not worried about looks as much as sound. // 9

Overall Impression: This guitar seems to work well for my punk/metal style, but it's definitely too good of a guitar for someone who has only been playing a year, as I have. This guitar is FAR better than my other electric and sounds unbeleiveably better. If it were stolen, I would first put all of my energy into killing the person who took it and reaquiring it, but if that failed, I would definitely get another one of these, or just the best guitar that I could afford. I don't think I hate anything about this guitar, but my favourite feature is definitely the Zero-Resistance vibrato system. I play with the whammy bar quite a bit, which I really shouldn't because the pressure pad is missing at the nut, so the guitar goes way out of tune when I use it a lot. I didn't really compare this axe to anything else, because it was a chance that my brother gave me that I totally jumped on (I mean, if you had the chance to buy a seven-hundred-dollar guitar for two hundred bucks, would you jump on it? I think you would!). The only things I wish that this guitar had is some Dimebucker pickups and the guitar's name (Violette) in gold-leaf lettering below the bridge. This guitar is absolutely badass. I highly reccomend it. // 10

Good guitar as long as you don't downtune it and put thicker strings on it. In that case the frets need to be sanded down. Or at least, that's my experience, tuned in C# with 0.11 strings. When it came out of the box it played fantastic. I'm going to bring it away soon for a tune up and I'm putting an EMG pickup I have lying around on it. I also like the inlays. When giging I always have a backup in case a string breaks or something likt that. (had some bad experiences in the past)